


Our Love Will Be Legend

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Multi, Not Levi/Eren Centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-24 00:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2561504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Alternate Canon) There are two steps, it seems, to defeating the Titans.<br/>First, kill the Ape Titan.<br/>Second, kill the coordinate.<br/>After Eren Yeager gives up his own life to free humanity at the age of twenty-five, the world thanks him. Three months later, when Corporal Levi Ackerman gives up his own life (for reasons unknown), the world is shocked. That is, everyone besides a select few in the Scouting Legion. <br/>As they start to recall their witnesses to the romance between the two, they are forced to confront their own grief and the things they've suffered throughout the war. And eventually, with solace in each other, they start to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sunrise At Wall Maria

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fic was originally based on the Ereri AMV for the song "Whispers," by Dave Baxter. It came to me in my head as a sweet story, an introspective one, just supposed to make you think. Of course, nothing ever turns out well for me in that sense, and almost every single person who read it on Wattpad and Fanfiction.net said that it made them sob.  
> Oops.  
> Anyway, it's really not as boring as it sounds, I hope. I wrote this to practice my writing skill, and you can see as it lumbers along that I'm growing a little bit better than the sorry state it was at at first.  
> I hope you enjoy! Not to be picky, but I always enjoy a good review. Reviews are nice. They make me feel happy, and that makes me write more.  
> Bye-bye!  
> _ErinEqualsEhrynn_

Long shadows dance over the mud-choked water of the canal. The morning stirs a carefree whisper among the forests and meadows that line either side, sometimes joined by the hum of a pedestrian walking along the well-worn paths between the walls. Anyone who sets foot there can remember a time, only months before, when the plants spoke in hushed concern, and the river gurgled with tense fear—the fear that it could all be disturbed by the giant nightmares that once plagued the world. But now, for some reason, that fear has faded into that of a past dream or a story told by parents to scare naughty children. Some remember—some remember all too well. And what scares them is how their millennium-long struggle has already dwindled into oblivion. Soon, the titans will be no more than legend.

Where the Armored Titan once broke through Wall Maria, a gaping hole still remains. With the threat of bloodthirsty beasts gone, the Garrison have stopped focusing their efforts on patching it—rather, they’ve evened it out into a series of arches, letting the canal venture through into the world beyond. The remains of a tower blown off in the fall of Shiganshina serves as a toll booth.

The toll keeper is a potbellied man. Even though he’s in the evening of the prime of his life—mid thirties, per say—the military had never been even part of consideration for him. In his logic, while it’s all well and good to defend humanity, there has to be a man out there to keep the human race actually going. Not that it matters anymore, anyway. He and his wife moved to Shiganshina months before, with the halfway promise of honor that was there before the titans were exterminated.

He yawns and stretches. To both the east and west, the canal is empty as far as the eyes can see, and he might as well catch up on some much-needed sleep while the coast is clear—his wife had given birth, and now they both ha a wrinkled, annoying, and absolutely lovable and adorable parasite stealing their nights. As the sun freckles the water and makes the gently lapping waves shimmer like the surface of a sword, he lazily projects his strength on keeping his eyes open and instead soaks in the overall beauty of the place. Minutes pass, and he hears to beginning of the day’s construction, a chorus of hammers and grunting Garrison.

But beyond that, he hears the sloshing of an approaching boat from the west, from the interior of the walls. “Heh?” he mumbles. “There ain’t no barges down the canal, much as my eyes can see.” He shrugs. “Must be them workers slackin’ off and takin’ a bath in downstream. Well, misters, wait ‘til a barge comes along and rams you down. Ha!”

The mild sloshing takes no heed to his words, and he resigns himself to lowering his lids across his eyes and taking a nice look at his dreams—only for a moment or two, I swear. He’s far gone, visions of demonic babies, snappy wives, stone arches, and ruined cities swirling through his imagination (because truthfully, there is nothing else going on with his life at the moment.

A wide canoe—possibly the scrapped bed of an old supply wagon—drifts smoothly along with the current, moving at such a leisurely pace and making so few ripples around its worn edge that one might swear it’s a part of the river itself. Hastily picked wildflowers are haphazardly arranged around the wood, hiding all the unattractive cracks and making a mattress of clouds for its cargo. It slips past the toll booth, giving a hushed giggle like a child, and watches the heaving chest of the sleeping toll keeper.

Two men rest in the boat. Their backs crush the flowers that levitate them, and their chests are cooled by the golden chill of the morning sun. Dew drips on their faces from the petals that frame them. Their eyes are closed, but it’s debatable due to the peace that practically wafts from them whether they’re really dead or whether they’re just following the toll keeper’s example and catching up on much-needed sleep.

One of them sends a swift kick at his still body. His foot, though perfectly visible, disappears as it passes through his white-clothed thigh. He snorts, annoyed. “Well, isn’t that useless.”

The man beside him cracks a smile. “Well, if it weren’t, what use would it be? We’re dead. We can’t go back in there, so those people aren’t us.”

The shorter of the two glares across to his companion, his cutting gaze reaching just about his shoulder. “You’re useless, too.”

His smile widens. The insult is weak and meaningless, and they both know it. “Thanks.” He turns his attention to Wall Maria, growing ever larger and looming before them. “Huh. Last time I saw this portion of the wall, I was ten.”

“That’s…” The burgeoning witty remark dies in his mouth. “Really?”

“Yeah. I also was traumatized, angry, and crying pretty damn heavy. Oh, and emotionally unstable. Weird that that was fifteen years ago, eh?”

“No sh*t. Don’t remind me. Makes me think of our age difference, which makes me realize I’m old. Very old.”

The taller one slaps him, hard, in the back. He grumbles. Were he alive and given the ability to feel pain, that would probably leave a red mark through his uniform. When did his subordinate suddenly grow strong? Oh, wait a minute, it must have happened somewhere between the time of his entry to the Corps and his death. That isn’t to say he still can’t hand the brat his own ass on a platter.

The thought occurs to him that because they can’t feel pain, he could probably hit the little shit into oblivion. But then he remembers that although half the time he has a distinct urge to strangle him, he’s also irrevocably in love with him, and that certainly puts a damper on the mood.

He realizes that the man is speaking. “Well, good thing you died before the gray hair finally caught up to you, eh? Actually, I’m surprised you aren’t gray. Being the best puts pressure on you.”

“Maybe I am gray, and what you see is a very, very dark shade,” he quips. He resists the urge to sigh happily as a calloused hand rakes gently over his head, and instead settles for saying, “If you mess up my hair permanently you’ll have hell to pay.”

“Sorry.” The hand immediately runs his fingers the other way, smoothing it back. “But nope, that’s not gray. Not a little bit. Black, through and through.”

“Goddamn right it’s not gray. I’ve worked quite literally my entire life maintaining a youthful appearance. Now would be an inconvenient time for that to change.”

“In speaking of that…” he trails off. “Do you think we can dock in Shiganshina?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.

“Nothing, really. But I know you hate it when I change the topic without a word to the edgewise, so I added a few connectors in there,” he says. “But really, can we?”

The humorous mood is shot through with the inevitable nostalgia. “Do you want to see your house one more time? Before, you know, we reach wherever we’re going?”

“Yeah,” the man admits. “I know that since we basically have eternity together to look forward to, I’ll find my mom at one point. But I just want one more reminder.”

“Of what?” his companion asks.

“Of being human,” he replies.

For the third time or so since dying, the shorter man’s composure threatens to break. It’s still a difficult concept for him to accept that he doesn’t have to hide his emotions anymore, but then, he’s standing next to that one person. He’s already seen past his walls, and he was once possibly the only soul he could cry against. Now, it’s the same, technically, because they seem to be the only two wandering souls around and it seems it will stay that way unless he runs away to find someone else—a fate he’d run through hell a million times over to avoid.

A pair of no-longer-lanky-now-they’re-muscular-shit-when-did-he-become-a-sex-god arms find their way around him and tug him to his chest. “Sshh,” the voice belonging to the arms says.

“Sorry. I’m starting to recognize the appeal that being sarcastic and emotionless has. Without that aspect I think I would have cried enough to make a pool out of Sina.”

“No, it’s fine,” he automatically says. “Really. Cry until you melt my shoulder, for all I care. You deserve that chance. Besides, now that you can’t feel physical pain you can’t get a hangover.”

He pulls away from the embrace, looking up quizzically. “You can’t get a hangover from crying.”

“You’d be surprised how similar drinking and crying are. Both make you numb using some kind of liquid, both have you babbling incoherently, both make you fall asleep, and both make you wake up with a raging headache.”

“Alright, you can get a hangover from crying. What’s the point again?”

“You can cry if you want to, ‘cause I’ll be here.”

At those words the short one snakes his own arms around the other’s torso and buries his face in the soft folds of his twice-turned, well-worn shirt. They are dead, but for some reason, he is warm and his heart is beating like a perfect drum.

“Are you still crying?”

He isn’t crying anymore, but he has no desire to loosen himself. After what seems an eternity of being constantly reminded by seemingly everything of the man’s death, it will be a difficult thing to pry him more than the span of a household from him. And for not having the ability to be hungry or tired, he wants to use him as a pillow, because he’s found in the past that the oddly heated body of a lover amounts to much more than the stuffed crap the military provides.

“Nah,” he answers. “Don’t let go, though. I’ll kick you so that if you were alive it would hurt, if you do.”

“I know this is awkward for me to repeat it,” the man says. “But can we dock the boat?”

“You’re useless,” he repeats, but it’s muffled in the shirt. “Okay,” he speaks up. “I don’t think we can physically tie the boat to the edge of the canal, but if you want, we can run up to the house, say goodbye, and run back to the boat before it leaves Shiganshina.”

“How long will that take?”

“Not a lot of time. Enough, I suppose. The canal is a bit winding in this city.”

If possible, they both crush each other even closer together. Over Maria, a huff of haughty wind glides over them, and to anyone who knows that the walls are, in fact, made of a small legion of Colossal Titans, they’re quite positive that it’s at least one of them laughing at the ridiculously adorable display of ridiculous idiots who are ridiculously in love, ridiculously dead, yet, at the same time, ridiculously alive. Maria draws closer. Soon, they’ll pass the toll booth and the oblivious toll keeper, and they’ll enter the clanging world of working Garrison members, all breaking their relieved backs to patch the town of the taller man’s youth together.

“Let’s do it,” the one from Shiganshina says.

“You know, they were discussing renaming Shiganshina after you.”

“Really? I was pretty sure the world had forgotten me. Guess not.”

“Of course not. That blond experiment of puberty is commander. Your sister took my place. And they’re not going to let a single person on this earth forget your name.” Considering, he adds on. “Even that tall asshole you always fought with. I think he’s the one to suggest the idea in the first place.”

“In which case, they should rename Stohess after you.”

“If Miss Inverted Angel finally cuts the crap, marries her obsessive girlfriend, and takes the throne like she was born to, I think it actually might happen.”

The man falls silent, and instead of looking downstream, he looks away from the sunrise and towards the dock by the castle they’d called home for years. “Do you think they’re mourning us?”

“Of course they’re mourning us, shithead. That’s what humans do. They mourn, mourn, and mourn, and in the process they forget to make sure they’re worth mourning for.”

He’s hit lightly on his upper forearm. “We’re mostly human too, you know.”

“You know what I mean,” he says in exasperation. “Besides, if we can’t feel pain, we can only interact with each other, and we quite literally cannot make a difference in the world, how are we human?”

“Deep.”

“Shut up.”

“Especially coming from you…”

“Shut up—you know you love me.”

“I know I do.”

A shadow paints over them. The arches are strong: the mortar fresh, unbreakable; the red legs of the Colossal Titans hardly visible in the shadows. The toll booth is positioned uncomfortably on its side, and a fluttering snore escapes the toll keeper’s lips. “Ye damn workers,” he mumbles unconsciously. “Goin’ ahead an’ tryin’ ta wake me up—nah, well, I need my shut-eye, and you folk ain’t goin’a take it away’s.”

The city is buzzing. Though the ubiquitous presence of a small country of militarists swarms the streets, slowly but surely returning the pried-up cobblestones to their rightful places, still it’s plain to the eye that citizens are returning at nearly the same rate at which they left fifteen years before.

“It’s just like it was before,” the man says. “Almost.”

Not responding, his companion watches the wall cede around them. He grabs the tall one’s arms. “Let’s go,” he says.

They leap out of the boat, feet slapping the water like it is dirt, and legs moving faster than the bodies laying side by side in the mattress of clouds and flowers could ever hope to. A smile flits over the face of the shorter man and stays firmly in place on the face of the taller. He can tell what he’s thinking: home, home, home, I’m home. It strikes him as halfway tragic and halfway beautiful that after over half his life, he still remembers perfectly the route home.

They’d breached the basement in the end. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting to find: a part of him admired the members of other squads that joked it was the only titan pornography that existed in the world. But it wasn’t what they found.

He still regrets what was done to save humanity. He rather would have saved him. 

The house is all the way built back up. It looks just like it did before, excluding the furniture of course, but it can never really be the home that the tall man knew. That floorboard next to the stairs is no longer sticking up and giving his family splinters—some of his fondest memories started with a shriek from his mother or Mikasa or a curse from his father—and his bed no longer is positioned in just a way that he can hide Armin’s book when they sleep over. The kitchen no longer smells like burnt sausage—from when his father tried to cook—and sweet bread—when Armin demonstrated his heavenly skills. No longer is there a rusty doorknob to the bathroom which, no matter how many times its oiled, still screams an alarm whenever it’s opened or closed. No longer is there a loose patch in the attic where, on nights when Mikasa has nightmares about her family’s murder, they sneak out onto the roof, watch the stars through cloudless skies, and talk about nothing in particular until their voices hurt. His heart is threatening to worm its way back into being alive, just so he can bring that back.

But then again, without those disappearing, he wouldn’t have fallen in love, now, would he?

“Are you ready to let go?” Levi asks.

Eren hesitates. Shiganshina is the home of who he once was. Now, the world of the living has been expended, and he has entered with open arms into the land of the dead. There’s still a tendril of possessiveness over the town, but in this case, he’d rather it belong to those who can change it for the better. “Yeah,” he says. “I am. But they’d better rename it Jaeger or I’ll wring all their necks through the void.”

“How are you not crying?”

“I did my share while I was alive. Now, since in all technicality, I can’t drink, I don’t think there are any tears left to spare.”

“And that means?”

“You’ve got a while left before you reach my state of higher being. Though you’ll never quite catch me in the height department, either.”

Levi swats him on the head, fully knowing he doesn’t feel a thing. “You know, sometimes I want to kill you. Again.”

“Like hell you will. You know you love me.”

“I know I do.”


	2. Armin's Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin remembers Jean and Marco, Franz and Hannah, and finding the basement, and suddenly, he realizes.

The simplistic days surrounding their training seemed mostly like another life to most of the graduates in the 104th training squad. After all, in a world where the inevitable countdown to death is measured in days, hours, even minutes rather than years—even if they all knew it should be years—every moment counts; every moment has to count. But despite the obvious hazing that Shadis put them through—yes, despite all the humiliation and pain they underwent, the bonds they formed during those days put a sweet-scented blur of childhood over their later memories of training, a blur that ended with agonizing clarity on the day that Trost was breached.

The majority of the relationships formed there were platonic—excluding those pairs of best friends whose gazes held just too long, or those people who pretended they were enemies, but they none-too-subtly were holding hands through the cracks in the tables. But then, there was Franz and Hannah, as much an example of romance as anything they’d ever seen in their relatively short lives.

Armin remembered one time Jean approached him with a disgusting grimace, holding the trays with the meager savings they were allowed. It confused him somewhat—Eren had departed for extra training with Mikasa and Connie, and even though he got along eons better with Jean than Eren did, they never really sat together. However, he couldn’t, in all rights, just say, “What rat bit your ass?” as he was tempted to, so he settled for, “Are you okay, Jean?” (much more domestic and acceptable).

“Sort of,” Jean had said. “Jaeger’s not here, so I’m decent, I guess, but I can’t stand the two lovebirds over there.” He threw his head back in a pointing sort of gesture.

“Oh. Franzah?” Armin quipped, prompting a laugh from Jean.

“Sure enough. I think they’re trying so hard to hide it that they’re not.”

“That…” he trailed off. “Did that sound better in your head?”

Jean bit his lip and went slightly pink from embarrassment. “Most things do, actually. Did that make any sense to you?”

No, Armin thought. “Sort of,” Armin said.

Shortly afterwards, Marco walked over—he and Jean were best friends, after all—and Armin had to hold in a knowing smirk because suddenly, he understood perfectly   
what Jean meant. They were so focused on trying to hide the fact that they were more than friends, that their behavior made it perfectly obvious.

If Jean and Marco weren’t the same gender, Armin had a clear feeling that they would get married at the first interval they’d get.

But that really wasn’t the memory Armin was trying to call upon, despite being loath to let that mental image of a carefree once-upon-a-time go.

He’d been walking down the cobblestone streets of Trost. To the normal eye, the sides of the building were spotless. But Eren was dead, and so was who-knows-how-many people he’d come to hold specially in his hearts over the past years, and through the shadows in his eyes, the walls, the streets, the sky, were covered with and choked with blood. His stride was strong—he had to be strong, right? Despite proving otherwise, despite proving his lack of worth in earlier minutes, he had to show any of the remainders that he wasn’t broken (but he was, anyhow)

And he hoped so much that it wasn’t Mina’s broken body he saw slumped against a column, but through the slick and sickeningly beautiful veil of red that hid her face, and the dress of red that twirled over her body (all for her twisted, forced wedding with Death) it was definitely the sweet girl he’d befriended.  
Armin had to brace himself not to vomit over the ruined ground.

A panicked panting cut through the air as he approached a courtyard near the edge: female, disorderly, as he noted in his head, and horribly familiar. He turned his head to the street adjacent to the one he was one. He wished he hadn’t.

For the first time, he thought briefly in the titans’ mindset. He didn’t, of course, realize that he was, because he’d never had a conversation with a titan and he had no desire to in the near future. But, anyway, for the first time, he realized that human beings are vessels, with guts and heart and soul hidden within.

Franz’s vessel had been broken. If he were alive, he would never be able to walk again, but he wasn’t, and the fact that the realization was so slow in his mind to register was likely the most painful part. Intestines teased the world, and blood had a bit of fun with some horizontal rain. It was gruesome. It was hellish. And he wanted to rip himself apart, too, because he couldn’t tear his eyes away from him.

Hannah kneeled over him, puffing like the leather wedge they used to stoke fires. Armin could hardly see the color of her eyes behind the tears blurring them—he was pretty sure they were hazel, or maybe a light brown, but with the grief they read as gray. Her hands pressed down on his chest, trying to bring his stilled heart back to life. It was like kissing a pillow in hopes to resurrect it.

“Hannah,” he said quietly.

She looked up, her gaze frantic and not calming when she realized who it was. “Armin, thank Rose, you have to help me! Franz…if I can’t wake him up, he might die.”

“He’s already dead, Hannah.”

Anger flashed red over her face. “No! He’s not dead, he’s not dead, no, he’s not dead. He’s just unconscious. Not dead. How could you—how could… Just help,   
verdammt!”

He could feel his composure withering. Couldn’t he just leave her alone? No. If he did, she would die. He couldn’t have that. Kneeling down, he placed one hand over hers, and one over his. It was like marble—soft, pliable marble. “Please, just listen. He’s not alive. He died a while back.”

Nothing.

“But...really, just think about it. I—I know you love him. But if you were to wake him, he would be in pain for the rest of his life.”

The anger faded, and again Hannah wasn’t a heartbroken, traumatized soldier. She was the helpless, innocent young woman she should have been (the domestic life she deserved). “But… I love him,” she said.

Armin tightened his hold on her hand. “Let him go, and maybe you can have a happy ending.”

He didn’t know where the words came from. They always came up at just the right time, at a time when they were needed. Sometimes, he wondered whether there was a second Armin hidden inside him—an Armin that was strong, an Armin that was smart, an Armin that was needed. Truthfully, he believed this was true wholeheartedly, and all he actually wondered was when he would close the gap and become both at once.

He hoped for a sliver of a second that his words had gotten through to her, but she shook her head vehemently. “No,” she said. “He’s alive, but I need to keep on trying; keep on trying; keep on trying…”

"Stay alive,” he said. He couldn’t stay here forever, as much as his frustration pushed him to make her understand, so he made his legs move and continued down the open road. Titans roared and people screamed behind him, but he was still alive.

Just about a decade later, those memories were clapping in his head. Stupid, prideful memories. Why couldn’t they leave him alone and let him live in the present?  
But this time, the circumstances were so, so different.

They'd found the basement, the Special Ops Squad. It wasn't unbelievably painful for Armin, but the nostalgia of being near his former home rendered him useless to combat--not that there were any titans, anyway, but it was frighteningly close to his state of helplessness when Everything Became Clear (namely, Trost).

He walked with tender steps down the narrow, winding road. In a matter of ten years, humanity had lost it all. But their first win had brought them, slowly, painfully, back to where they began. It was almost humiliating to realize that holding their own was as grueling as making an offensive. Where death is around every corner, and no titan cares whether they're on defense or offense--their swords are all stained with the same blood, and humanity was still in its toddler stage.

He stood before the dilapidated remains of his family's library. Dried blood crusted the splintered walls and the tumbled stone, and he realized for possibly the first time since the fall of Maria that the books must be in terrible shape. Books. Books. 

He could remember fictional tales of valiant knights who lived in the isolated castles in Wall Maria; of dauntless criminals who lurked beneath the streets of the capital; of a grief-ridden soldier who changed the tide of the war. He, Eren, and Mikasa used to read them, hours on end, and laugh about their impossibility. But, there were the Survey Corps in their isolated castle; there was Corporal Levi; there was Eren. It was odd that, in his wiser days, when he should be learning to dismiss fantasy, he was finding the impossible to be true.

But in that logic, he thought, then everything in that book was real. 

Without another thought to edgewise, Armin found himself digging with rough hands through the stone to the ruined basement door--the Jaegers weren't the only ones with a basement of interest.

An exhalation of dust strove from the clouded corridor. Darkness loomed from below, but it was a familiar darkness. He'd seen it many a stormy night when he went into the special literature collection. He instinctively grabbed the candle from the stone cubby and lit the wick, closing his eyes as the smell of Maria wildflowers mingled with the acrid scent of wax and the buttery light.

Rats squealed at the unfamiliar presence and skittered to hide in their crevices.

A leather-bound volume was laid neatly on the floor, and Armin had to choke back tears. The same age-worn cracks, the same gold lettering. He'd left it there when checking for his family on the day of the Fall, and in his mind's eye he could clearly see it tumbling over the clay floor. It was still there.  
His dreams, too--to see the ocean, to see the world; they were still there. "Mikasa. Eren," he said. He clutched it to his chest. With the mysterious appearance of pectorals and a six-pack, it didn't quite fit like it did when he seemed almost hermaphrodite. But it was enough. It was enough.

The sunlight was blinding to him, and he heard a heart-spurning scream.

His footsteps carried him to the Jaeger household just as Levi emerged from the rubble, throwing his body like a net across the hole where the basement descended. His eyes were glass, but then, they were wet glass. He stared at Eren and at nothing, mumbling worried whispers under his breath.  
Erwin stepped forward. "Levi, let us through."

"No!" the man barked. "You can't see it, oh Rose Eren can't see it, no one can see it. No. Uh-uh. No one through, no one through."

"You're talking like a madman," the commander said. "I don't care if you don't like what you saw down there; you have to show us too, or else that would be traitorous if not simply selfish."

"No," he repeated. "I'm the most selfish goddamn person in the walls. I'll tell you what--let's cancel the offensive. It's a miracle to keep the walls protected, now, right? 

No. No one. Even better, let's take--let's take..." He was cut off by a stunning blow from the back of Erwin's hand. Unconscious, he slumped over the stump.

"Come, Jaeger. Let's see what your father's been hiding, shall we?" He beckoned with a finger before turning to the rest of the squad. "You. Stay out here and restrain Corporal if necessary when he wakes."

When the two ascended the stairs, tears made a stiff mask over Erwin's face. Eren seemed to be caught somewhere between anger and numbness--somewhere labeled determination. He strode over to Corporal and hoisted him onto his back, something like "I'm sorry," slipping from his lips.

Later, when he and Mikasa peppered him about what was in the basement, he never admitted anything, except that he wished he could.

Armin wished he hadn't been so blind as to not figure it out. It became clear when Everything Verdammt Fogged Up Again (namely, when the titans were defeated)

A QUICK GUIDE ON HOW TO RID THE WORLD OF TITANS  
STEP ONE: KILL THE APE TITAN  
STEP TWO: KILL THE COORDINATE

Below the cliff was a valley. The sheer rock face stretched what seemed miles, and every mile was stained with the light red, almost pink, blood of the Ape Titan. They were sure; they'd checked. It was dead. Completely dead. But, they could see monsters out in the distance, slowly catching wisps of the human scent and roaring appreciatively. The Ape Titan was dead. Shouldn't they all be dead?

(Namely, the rest of the Survey Corps did not know about the second part of the plan, and they were only half-sure that Eren was the coordinate)  
Beyond the cliff, it was beautiful. Somehow, the green forests were golden in the afternoon sun, and somehow, the golden plains reflected blue in the afternoon sky. It wasn't an ocean, but it was enough. It was enough.

An entire military branch gathered on the outcropping, every eye, every mind, every heart turned to the brown-haired, green-eyed, oozing-testosterone man who stood, fearlessly, feet from the edge. Armin knew it was a calm, mature military captain who stood before him, his equal, and the hope of the war. But in his mind, and in his heart, Eren was still the same boy who befriended him when he had no one, who died for him when he should have, who lived for him when he had no hope.

(A strange boy on the shorter side released an angry shout and tunneled down the alleyway. Fists hit his face, but more of his fists hit theirs. Armin watched in awe. He had no clue it was his honorary brother who fought for him.)

"I address this speech to my comrades in the Survey Corps," Eren began.

"Many say to me that I am unfortunate, that life has spurned me and that fate has made me its slave. I am not one to argue. I never asked for the pressure of being a titan, nor of holding the lives of many in my hands, nor the death and betrayal of my family, nor the constant harassment from other branches of the military and even civilians. I myself am surprised I haven't yet gone insane.

"However, the most fortunate man in the world can have wealth, fame, talent, and every form of luck and success wherever he may venture. However, if he ventures alone, is it truly worth it?

"In the Survey Corps, I have those I love: as family--"  
Mikasa and Armin exchanged a glance with an underlying smile.

"--as friends--"

The former members of the 104th training squad released a small chorus of tenor whoops and yells.

"--and as more...romantic interests."

Gasps issued at the confession. Mikasa's eyes widened in shock, and Armin wasn't so sure himself? Eren? A secret lover? Unrequited love? They'd never heard about it.  
"And so, even though I am abused and ridiculed, and even though death lies around every corner for me, I know that out of all humanity..." He smiled lazily, tiredly. "I am the truly fortunate one.

"When the Special Ops Squad recovered my basement, they discovered the history behind the titans, and the way to eliminate them, permanently, from the world. I won't go into the history; you can ask Commander Erwin about that. But the secret to killing all the titans is, first, to kill the Ape Titan, which has been done."

Sling! Eren's sword was removed from its holster.

"The second, is to kill the coordinate. And...well..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I figured I might as well say goodbye."

Armin wasn't sure who screamed first, him or Mikasa or someone else he didn't want to recognize, but looking over at his honorary sister, he realized that she was just as paralyzed as he was. He could see someone else, paralyzed, under an umbrella of grief. Who?

Eren made eye contact with Armin, and he nodded silently. I love you, brother, they both said invisibly, quietly. But the world heard them, clear as day.  
"I'm sorry," Eren said. "I never wanted it to end this way. But vengeance is still vengeance, and it's been fifteen years. I love you. You know who you are. You tried your best, and I'll still love you after the last beat of my heart. Shit, that was sappy.

"I wonder, though--if I die, am I still a monster?"

The sword reached up. The blade was prepared.

"I've always wanted to be human, but maybe being human is overrated."

The blade quivered. It begged to fall.

"I know this is selfish, but monsters are remembered. I want to be remembered. But I can't deny the fact that I'm still partly human."

Let me fall, said the blade.

"I guess I'll pull a typical Eren Jaeger, Suicidal Bastard, angry moron move, and die without knowing."

The blade fell, and suddenly, the air smelled like blood and death.

Looking over the cliff, the titans were dissolving into dust. They swirled away: leaves in an autumn stream, killers in a dying dream, tears on a tree-trunk's face, order in a lawless place--memories, in the hearts of those who loved him, because it's a cruel exchange--knowing that he saved humanity, but that selfish son-of-a-titan never saved them.

And suddenly, the war was over, and Adam and Eve ate the apple and noticed they were naked, and the soldiers in the Survey Corps saw Eren Jaeger's death and realized there was blood on their hands.

There was a sound of a struggle in the silence, and before any of the eyes could adjust, his body was being cradled in a muscular lap. It fit there, and the arms that held him and the lips that kissed him had the familiarity of someone who held him every night.

Levi was screaming. For the first time since Armin had met the man, he was screaming, and something wet burst through the dams of his emotion. Tears? He'd never seen them before, and his eyes held broken affection.

"No no no no Eren please no please no don't leave me alone I need you I'm sorry I'm so so so sorry I love you Eren I love you, love, love, love, love just please open your eyes for me Eren open your eyes and tell me you're okay please ROSE DAMMIT I NEED YOU PLEASE."

And then, the flood pouring from Levi's heart hit Armin with the hurt of realization.

The realization that, even if it was subtle, he should have seen.

He should have known.


	4. Mikasa's Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa can't bear to remember, so we watch as her witness bleeds through time.

If there had ever been one thing Mikasa associated Eren with, it was warmth. From the very beginning, even before he became a new stove-top titan, warmth radiated from him with the diversity and feral strength of fire—the anger of raging flame, and the comfort of flickering candles. He was a wildfire when he killed her kidnappers. He was a beckoning fireplace as he muffled her silent screams with a scarf. He was flying sparks, settling on each of the trainees, when at the military camp.

Even now, as he was dying, he protruded an intense wave of mournful wave, not snuffing out until the last second, but even then ashes settled that they all knew would never be able to be washed out.

Yet, the moment the embers quaking in his heart stilled, everything became cold.

She was torn between two irresistible urges—look away, or witness his last painful moments of life. In the end, it was a matter of figuring which was more agonizing. Her blood boiled cold and her heart pounded cold and her mind was cold cold cold and her scarf wasn't keeping her warm.

It was a threadbare scarf. The tassels were thick, but in the bitter wind, they did nothing to shield her neck. She supposed that it was Eren who made it work. Neither she nor Armin had a doubt—at least she thought Armin agreed; there was some form of agreement somewhere—that there was a passionate sort of magic contained within the boy—no, the man. He wasn't particularly athletic, though he'd become so in the past years; he wasn't the most intelligent; he made stupid mistakes, and he still occasionally lost his temper—mostly around Jean.

But there was a hidden quality, an unnamed entity, inside him that bent so many to his will without fancy words or trickery or even trying, really. It was a quality that struck love in all his friends' hearts and made them fall, hard, like silver ink into the forbidden book of Eren.

As she held back a ragged scream—or she might already have been screaming; it was too loud and too quiet and she couldn't tell—she realized that it was probably because Eren didn't have a lying bone in his body. There was always the truth etched in his face, as many truths as anyone could ever ask for or ever need in their lives. And on that note, it had always surprised her that he hadn't stumbled upon a lover yet.

To be honest, she had spent the majority of her teenage years believing wholeheartedly that she was romantically in love with Eren. It took her until she was seventeen to realize that those feelings transcended the sexual into the domestic into pure family. If she was even going to make a move, she'd wait until the conclusion of the war, and there was no way to predict what was happening now.

Of course, even though the idea had lost its appeal over the years, even if she still went through with her poorly thought out plan, it seemed that someone else had beaten her to the spot.

"No no no no Eren please no please no don't leave me alone I need you I'm sorry I'm so so so sorry I love you Eren I love you, love, love, love, love just please open your eyes for me Eren open your eyes and tell me you're okay please ROSE DAMMIT I NEED YOU PLEASE."

On the opposite side of the spectrum, she'd always seen Corporal Levi as ice cold. She'd grudgingly understood and forgiven him for the court incident, which took about a year, and a few years later, she could grudgingly admit that they were mostly friends. But after the 57th expedition, it had become clear that around the majority of the world, he was as hard as Annie's crystal, with the biting chill of the HQ winters and soldiers' corpses piled atop a supply wagon. She'd only ever seen him let a little light into himself around Eren, who had, with time, risen with rank and wisdom, and now the two were practically inseparable…

Oh.

Oh, no. 

How had she never realized, was what she wondered. With the sudden revelation, it didn't occur to her to be angry or proud or something in between, but it disturbed her in equal measures that Eren never told her and that she was too dense to pick up on the signs. Oh, Maria, this completely changed her scope on things. What had they really been doing when they "accidentally" happened to volunteer for kitchen duty almost every night together—they'd always sent playful glares across the room at each other, and she'd just assumed it had become a running inside joke between two good friends—but were they running the bases? And what kind of "private training" had it been? She should have known that the hero worship had long elevated to pure affection, and she'd seen it in the Corporal's eyes, seen the joyful glances he'd sent at Eren when he thought nobody was looking. Oh, she would sit them both down later, after all this was over, and have them a talk.

But wait. What was this that soon should be all over?

It hit her like Eren's titan fist, only this time the scar was in her heart. Eren was dead.

No more hissy fights about his protection, no more singing their Mutti's lullabies on the terrace, no more gossiping about Hanji and Erwin or Hanji and Moblit or any combination of the superior officers, really, and no more family.

Again, she found herself bound by ropes (now emotional), stripped (of her hope), and almost completely alone.

A scream tore through her brain, but when she shouted at the person to shut up, she realized it was her.

She glanced at Armin. His jaw was taut, and he looked closer to the young boy she'd once known than she'd ever seen him yet. But once upon a time, the young boy Armin had survived walking through hell itself, and through a fountain of tears he'd somehow emerged alive. He would be fine, she just knew it. She only had herself to take care of now.

But her own cries were mingled with desperate sobs from the direction of the cliff, and she furthermore realized that she would be hard-pressed to restrain him from turning and promptly killing himself.

He looked up and blue eyes of stormy skies met gray eyes of shifting steel, and she suddenly knew that her prediction wasn't too far off the mark. He looked wild and angry with the sense of a rabid animal whose pack was killed. He was a box of untapped power. He was dancing on the edge of oblivion.

He was already moving backwards towards the drop beyond them.

Arms were latched firmly around hers, and she was in no mood nor position to see who it was. The strain fiddled her throat until she could hear the raw vibrations throttle her mind. "Someone," she gasped out. "Restrain Corporal. Now."

Again, she had to grudgingly admit they were friends, and she also had to admit-grudgingly, as if that had to be said-that she didn't want him to die.

Hanji yelped upon hearing her; she dashed forward with such intensity that Mikasa had to worry whether she would accidentally pitch herself right off. "Levi!" Hanji shouted through a tearstained-were those tears?-gaze. "I know. I know what you're doing, and I won't let you."

Hannah kneeled on the cliff. She'd never known Eren that well. But she saw the exchange, and she knew. Years ago, Armin had said the something to her. "If he lives, he'll only hurt," or something along those lines. Her memory was fuzzy. But as she squinted at the short man she'd once respected and trusted with her life, she wondered if that piece of wisdom truly applied. 

"You know nothing," Levi whispered. "We almost had the world, Hanji. I told him not to do it. I told him that I'd kill them all with my bare hands and...and...I would have done anything, everything, so why isn't he alive?"

Mikasa fell slack in her holders' grasps. "Because," she said, tracing the cracks in the stone with her eyes. "Because to be human is to be a monster, and the act of being a monster makes you truly humans. Ours is the kind of world that won't accept fire."

Levi didn't question it.

It took three months for him to finally snap.

On the second month, Armin and Mikasa spent their days together. They walked down the path besides the canal in humiliation and silence, knowing that someday soon humanity's footsteps would trample the earth again. The canal was a miraculous shade of silver, blue, and green under the marbled sky.

Somewhere along the shadows, they veered off the path and traveled by gear along the Wall. They didn't think they could bear to see Shiganshina. Not yet.

After all, the art to letting go is one of delicacy and patience and love.

"Do you still wanna do it?" Mikasa asked. The swung their feet, carefree, over the edge, the straps of their gears cutting into their thighs, but they were content with idly watching the ache.

"Sort of," Armin said. "I feel like we owe it to him to reach the ocean. But without him there, it won't quite feel right."

"It won't," she agreed.

"Do you think he's still here?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered without hesitation. They were wrapped into a fierce hug-

The thin, ten-year-old boy with a geeky bowlcut-

And the defensive, apathetic girl who relied on no one but needed everyone.

In the eyes of everyone else who saw them, it was a tall, well-built twenty-five-year-old man with a sleek ponytail and a courageous, open-minded twenty-six-year-old woman, but they knew better. They knew that a decade, nearly two decades had passed and part of their story was now dead (but not gone), but it took more than death to break the bonds of true family.

Mikasa's last witness to their love happened five days later. It was rather a lot for a single day, but she'd dealt with worse.

She leaned against the stone walls of the terrace. It was odd to believe that once upon another lifetime, flowers and golden ivy grew around the circular deck. Now, there was just sturdy stone and chilled moonlight. She was alone. Rarely did people venture up there, anyway.

"A-ackerman?" Levi called out.

She turned. His eyes were invisible 'neath the shadows of his undercut, and hers softened with pity. "It's Mikasa," she said. "Call me Mikasa."

He approached her. "I suppose you've guessed by now what I've been hiding."

She nodded. "How long were you together?"

"About a year after the 57th expedition." His eyes drifted up the eleven or so centimeters that separated them. "I'm surprised you're not curious as to how it happened."

"I'm not one to voice my curiosities," she answered. He barked out a parched laugh, but it faded into a pain-choked silence. "If it isn't too hard," she said. "I'd like you to tell me how."

He gulped the summer air; it tasted frigid. "Sure. Okay.

"He was sixteen; I was twenty-nine. I was refusing to let my mourning for the squad and…and everyone else show. He let his feelings slip one day. Nearly shat himself out of embarrassment, but he backed it up by saying he would support me and all that. Cutest thing I'd ever seen. Nicest thing anyone had ever done for me."

"So nine years, eh?" she said, almost to herself.

"Nine years," he answered her, then audibly winced. "Ugh. Sorry, I mean. That wasn't a question, was it?"

"It wasn't."

"He wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you, too—I wanted to scream out to the whole damn world that I was in love with…" He faltered. "But Hanji intervened. Said that the superior-subordinate relationship was risky enough as it was, and the fact that everyone, everywhere, was set against Eren, we could never tell anyone. It hurt, I tell you. More than I think it should have." He glanced towards her. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she whispered. "More than okay."

Because he loved Eren, she mentally finished. Because he was strong enough to hold on, and because he loved.

"Were you happy?

"Did he seem happy?"

She reflected on his memories, and it came to her that those must have been the happiest days of Eren's life. There was always a bout of laughter and a bundle of smiles, hardly picking fights with anyone unless they insulted someone he valued. It had all been Levi's work.

She smiled. "Yes. Yes, I think he was."

"Then I was happy too." He paused. "Did I ever tell you about my life before?"

"No."

"Well. Long story short, I lived in the city beneath Sina. I never had a family. I had only two friends my entire life then. I became a major head of a smuggling corporation. Erwin kidnapped me, forced me into the Corps."

"That's…" she halted. "I know the pain of trafficking. In a much different way than yours, but still."

He nodded and examined her eyes. "You have Oriental blood. There's no way I couldn't understand."

"Did your past affect you?"

"Every night, I had nightmares. I saw…I saw them dying. All of them." She was about to cut in, but he continued. "Somewhere along the line, they disappeared, yielded away by a pair of stupid pretty green-ish bluish eyes.

"I think…I think you brother might have been an angel of some sort. He never disappeared from my dreams from then on."

She didn't know how to react to that, but somewhere along the string of broken words, her pinky found his. "Hmmph," she said. "Have good sex?" He grumbled, and she continued. "I was close to figuring it out, you know. We all knew you two were close on the molecular level, but you two were so uncharacteristic around each other. It was scary. No, but really, did you..."

"Yes," he interrupted. "Wonderful. So sad you missed it."

Slim arms slid around her back, and his face collided with her shoulder in a desperate embrace. She could feel the dampness stirring in the corner of his eyes, and the corner of hers. "He's really gone, isn't he?"

"Yeah," she answered.

"I still don't want to believe it."

"Neither do I." They fell into silence.

"He still hasn't, you know," he suddenly blurted, his sentiment muffled in her scarf.

"Huh?"

"Disappeared from my dreams. I see him every time I close my eyes, and he's always perfectly intact and laughing to me and doing all the things I loved to see him do. But I'm afraid."

"What more is there to be afraid of?" she said.

"That he won't be perfectly intact. That I'll lose the sound of his voice, and then his face, and he'll be a battered memory drifting through my subconscious forever. But I'm also afraid that he won't fade. I'm afraid that he'll follow me around wherever I go and I'll never allow myself to let go. Every time I close my eyes, Mikasa. It's driving me insane."

His words bled with helplessness, and she saw. Humanity's Strongest had been weak to begin with, and with every anchor that kept him from blowing away, he forever persisted in holding the chain. Even when the anchor itself was gone.

"What will you do?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I know that now, the politics will catch up with us. I'll become a symbol. My name will never be forgotten, but I will. I'll spend the rest of my life swept up under others' control, and a lot of people are going to be executed—I'm not going to lie. Hanji probably will be. And Erwin. Jean. Armin, too, and possibly you, but you're more likely to succumb to my fate. I'm not sure if you've realized, but I've lost almost everyone."

"What about us, Levi?" It came out as a shout. "What about Hanji; what about your squad and your superiors? What about upholding the wishes of Eren and seeing the outside world? What about the people who you say are going to die? What about holding on and caring for them?"

"I'm trying to say that I'm too far gone!" he roared. "Even if I stayed around, you and everyone else would only know a shell. I'm not human anymore, Mikasa! I gave my friendship to Isabel and Farlan and my trust to Erwin and all my heart to Eren, and look what happened! It's too late for me to be saved, dammit!"

"What are you going to do about it, huh?"

"I'm going to leave!" His voice grew ragged and soft, like the tattered flags of the Survey Corps that were scattered on the sites of their battles.

"You can't mean-"

"I do."

"Don't."

He returned to the embrace with limp arms. "You have all the people you've grown up with. They respect you just as much as they respect me, and beyond that, they care for you. You can all grieve for the family you've lost, and you can grieve for me if you find the place. I've thought it over. I've tried to talk myself out of it, but I can't be driven insane, completely, by the boy stashed in my dreams. I came here tonight to make my amends. I came here to say goodbye."

"That's too much."

"Tell me something, Mikasa. Do you hate me still?"

"No," she said firmly. "I let go of that years ago."

"And…" His voice was overcome with tremors, and she was surprised that the stones didn't tumble down from the earthquake of emotion. "I'm scared. Rose, I'm so, so scared of what will happen to me, if I die, or if I don't. I've always been so scared, but…do you still think me strong?"

She decided to answer honestly. "No. Because strength is what has ruined your life, Levi. You are too good for shallow things like strength."

Something wet soaked though her blouse. His voice was feathers. "Thank you."

His walls tumbled down.

She nodded. "I understand." She hugged tighter for a sliver of a second, then left the dead man walking on the balcony. "Goodnight, Levi. Goodbye. Oh, and..." She turned back. "I still respect you. Even if I've seen you reduced to more than tears and heard your suicide declaration. I once hated you; I thought you were an asshole. You still are an asshole, which I think is your way of showing affection. But I'm prouder than words can say to call you my friend and brother, and you just might be the carrier of the most beautiful goddamn heart I've ever known."

She pushed her smile past the waterfall of tears. "So put on your wings, soldier, and fly to Eren, fly home, right where you belong."

The next day, she woke up the Hanji's sobbing voice waking her in their shared dormitory. "Oh my Rose, Micah, Levi's dead..."

"Dead," she whispered.

"They-they found him there, underneath the tower, I mean, and it was horrible-there was blood everywhere, and half his skull was split open, but the worst part was-" Hanji faltered, and she noted the rage that crossed the Commander's features. A blink, a fad, but a sign, she believed: that spirit, months after his death, hadn't gone away.

Hanji collapsed on the off-white sheets. Mikasa pretended not to see the torrent of raindrops fall, and pretended not to feel the guilt that coursed through her. I said yes to him. I let him kill himself, and yet we're still here.

I've done a terrible, terrible thing, and I should probably regret it more than I do.

"The worst part is... when they put on their gloves and turned him around, he was smiling." 

Mikasa bit her tongue to keep herself from crying, but there was a soft, sweet sense of satisfaction knowing that the story of their relationship ended with laces tied and crowns born.


	5. Jean's Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean remembers things he doesn't really want to, and he struggles over his long-forgotten feelings for Marco Bodt.

Jean wasn't a stranger to the art of keeping a broken heart beating. His sweet taste of young passion had been ended abruptly when Marco was torn apart without glory, without even an eye to the wise.

He figured it was maybe four months or so before he suddenly realized that the supportive boy he could proudly call his best friend had latched onto his soul and injected its loving venom, and he didn't know how, but that revelation in the face of intensive training allowed him unfettered access into his dreams. Happy dreams, domestic dreams, dreams with chaste kisses and cuddles, and dreams with not-so-chaste activities. As a relatively normal boy before he joined the military, he was witness to giggling girls and unfortunately giggling boys, but he had always found it odd that he never joined the ranks.

Sure, there was Anne Shores when he was eight, but she had pale curls, pink skin, blue eyes, no brain, and no personality. In fact, it was more of his mother who had placed the idea within his head that she was a very nice girl, a perfect wife, and the whole "thing" among his peers was finding the perfect spouse.

Yeah, so even through his adolescent years, when his round cheeks and round chin gave way to a chiseled jaw and equally chiseled cheekbones, he was never subject to a crush, so when Marco came along and dotted the lonely darkness of his soul with beautiful freckle-stars, he was blinded by the halo of this new angel.

(That wasn't to say that he wasn't temporarily dazzled by Mikasa—a girl with the strongest spirit and prettiest hair he'd ever seen. But she was evidently in love with Eren, and Eren was an ass, and it ended there.)

It hadn't been so much disturbing as surprising, earlier on, when he put together the facts that 1, he liked Marco, and 2, Marco was a guy, and thus, Jean liked guys. His first thought was that his family back home would probably be ashamed, but then he realized that he wasn't going to see them again in a while, and he really didn't care, anyway.

Anyway, it was two months after that that, when the two were assigned to cleaning gear alone, Marco let it slip that he thought Jean to be, and quoting, "really beautiful." He'd ended there, and he'd blushed the color of petals. A gorgeous color, in Jean's opinion. It was all he could do to not kiss him on the spot.

He remembered everything about that night—the enraged chirping of the crickets outside, the warmly wafting darkness through the narrow cracks in the shed, and through the window, the encouragingly sighing moon against the glare of the lantern. There was dust everywhere and mud on Marco's face, but he swore that Marco had never been more perfect in his eyes.

And somewhere along the line he had turned into a complete sap, and Jaeger couldn't find out about this or else the whole training corps would find out and he would be socially scorned.

But those limitations could go to hell, so long story short, Jean said nothing, leaned forward, and kissed him.

He had tasted like fresh rye bread and the strands of grass Marco chewed mindlessly on while concentrating, and his eyes felt like closing, but he kept them open just to see Marco's flutter gently closed.

"I've just kissed an angel," Marco breathed.

Jean spluttered. "Angel..you…me…what? You're the angel, though!"

Marco giggled, and he swallowed the lighthearted laugh with another kiss.

And with that, their secrets were out, and Jean's emotions hit an unprecedented plateau that rose high over the clouds and was so dazzlingly bright and the air was so thin that he was struck breathless. Not even Eren could drag him down.

However, he failed to realize that plateaus don't span the entire world. They drop, steep and long. He knew the phrase, "The higher they rise, the further they fall," but in his state of teenage bliss, he failed to acknowledge it.

And on that day, which Armin called the day when Everything Became Clear, namely, the day Trost was breached, he fell with his hands grasped firmly with Marco's. They faced the ground below willingly and stubbornly, and even as the clouds drew them apart and the earth loomed nearer, they still let their hearts pound freely.

Then they hit the cobblestone, covered in blood, and only Jean survived.

Everything had been a blur up to the point when he found his young lover dead. There were titans, and there was death, and everything had lost the dreamlike quality of the training camp. The offensive seemed colder than reality could ever hope to accomplish, and it was a moment of truth for him, as he saw his comrades of auld lang syne dropping like captured raindrops: they were all pieces on a chessboard. He didn't know what kind, but he had an ominous, orphic feeling that they were pawns.

For him, it all became clear when he saw Marco. He had been well used to the constant mindset of romance and poetry coursing through his heart. But Marco's heart wasn't even there; it had been bitten away, and with the sky crashing down on him came the change.

Everything was black and white.

Marco was dead.

He was alive.

Life was morbid and mysterious, and he didn't want to figure it out anymore.

And his heart twinkled as it shattered.

It had taken him at least a year to calm the raging pain that coursed through him, and even for a while after that he subtly mourned. But after a while, he came to realize several things:

1: It wasn't love. It was a crush, it was a passion, and it was only backed by physical attraction and sexual desire.

2: It had been an on/off relationship. He'd even started crushing on Armin, then Eren, and even Mina. Marco didn't deserve that.

3: At least he was spared the pain of seeing how it happened. If he had, he might have been mentally traumatized and had to quit the military.

A few days after Corporal Levi's broken and battered corpse was found, blue-gray eyes staring with the most peace he'd ever seen in them into the distance, Mikasa pulled him aside with one arm, the other holding Armin by the shoulder.

The world was in a state of perpetual shock. Those who claimed to have known him couldn't understand the dynamics of it. Wasn't the world finally free? Hadn't he finally fulfilled his role as Humanity's Strongest? He should be roaming the streets, a hero, with a broad smile on his face.

Those in the Corps, though, knew better. They knew he was a depressed and angry man by nature, but they still couldn't understand the reasons behind suicide. He could try making friends and memorials, writing about his experiences, and a bundle of therapeutic bull that might heal his soul.

She dragged them onto the terrace—the significance of this, Jean was not aware—and sat them down on the stone bench that circled the tower.

"Alright," she said. "Alright."

"Alright?" Jean repeated.

"Yeah," she affirmed, already out of breath, staring into the stone behind their heads like she saw an empty dream there. "I can do this. I can tell you."

Armin nodded encouragingly. "You can do this, Mikasa. What is it?"

"The…the reason behind Le—I mean, Corporal's suicide." She nodded, but to herself. "I know it. And I..I have a confession to make."

"Go ahead," Jean said. "We won't interrupt."

"Promise?"

"Promise," the two men harmonized.

"So. I saw him on the night that he killed himself. I—I was here. Alone. Just thinking, I guess. About everything. Nothing. Eren. What the hell we were going to do with his body after preserving it in ice for three months. The stars, too. They were so loud, but the terrace was so quiet.

"Then he came out. His face was calm, his expressions at least, but I think that was one of the few times I ever saw so much emotion in his eyes. And then…he told me.

"He told me that they were together. Romantically. They were lovers for nine years, ever since Eren turned sixteen."

Jean turned to Armin, Eren's best friend, to see how he would react. Surprisingly, there was no hint of shock visible on his face, if not to the fact that it had been going on for nine years.

"He told me that he was happy because Eren was happy. He told me that they had great—well, let's skip that. But there were things he didn't have to say. There were things that I just knew. I could tell that Eren was Levi's savior just as much as the other way around. I could tell that, even though the age gap was large, he wouldn't have it any other way. And I could tell that…that…" Her voice broke, for just an instant.

"I could tell that he truly loved Eren."

Despite himself, something clicked within Jean, and tears sprouted in the corners of his eyes.

He knew exactly why Corporal Levi had killed himself.

There was a vast difference between what he had shared with Marco and what Levi had shared with Eren. They had been somehow strong enough to last nearly an entire decade. They knew—they knew—that in a world like theirs and being who they were, they would never be accepted, and yet, for that long, that never let that stop them.

Their love wasn't selfish. It wasn't the mindset Jean had, the mindset that Marco was his to kiss and whatever lovers did. Their love was holding up each other's shoulders, mending each other's flaws and loving wholeheartedly what they couldn't fix. Their love was sadness and happiness in equal measures. Their love was patient and selfless to the point where they'd give themselves up to see the other happy. (He remembered when they had opened the basement and Levi had babbled in a way so unlike him.)

Trust him, he'd know if anything was going on between Eren and anyone else or Levi and someone else, and yet, while Jean had taken to one-night stands at bars—and he wasn't the only one; Armin and Connie did this too—he had never heard one word about Eren being involved with someone.

They were in love. They were strong. They were dead.

"Oh my Rose," he whispered.

The list came to mind, and he was reminded that he was the fortunate one. Levi had watched his lover of nine years die, and by law he wasn't allowed to say anything. He hadn't known before. He hadn't been able to say goodbye. He watched the sword fall.

Jean and his friends were always secretly under the impression that after the deaths of the previous Special Ops Squad, Corporal was always a little messed up, emotionally and mentally. That didn't decrease their respect of him in any way; rather, they admired him even more for keeping up a stagnant face. This, added with the later-gleaned information that his first ever friends—Isabel Something and Something Church, was it?—put a lifetime of pain under this wing, and they could all easily admit that they probably wouldn't be able to handle it.

Jean himself thought he would snap and become a serial killer.

But then, after Levi's family and friends were gone, the one person he loved more than anyone else in the world was forced to make the decision between the life of humanity and the heart of his beloved.

"Oh my Rose," Jean repeated, and the tears blossomed and fell to the stone of the terrace. He smelled the petrichor. It was as bitter as the revelation.

Their story was already over for them, but from the very beginning, in a world woven with death, their love was tragic.

Every ounce of hate he'd ever held for Eren vanished, just like the titans so long ago,

Armin spoke up.

"I once studied a book on philosophy," he murmured. "It said there were four kinds of love.

"Storge, the love among family in friends. Phileo, just pure affection, love to be around others. Friendship and family, but stronger. Eros, the love of passion…" he paused.

Jean closed his eyes. Eros. He and Marco shared Eros, and among the soldiers there was an icing of Storge and Phileo.

"And Agape, the love of true love. It suffers long. It is kind. It's not jealous. It's not vain or proud. It's gentle. It's selfless. It's patient. It's anything but evil. It's stronger than the thickest wall. It is hope; it is belief. It endures, even through hardship. Most of all, it never fails.

"They say the first three kinds of love are simply human. They all expect reward in some way, shape, or form. But despite what Eren said on the day he died…he…he wasn't human. He was the last hope of us. Levi was the strongest among us. What about that, and those together, is really human?

"Truth be told, I knew, somehow, all along," Armin finished.

"Me too," Mikasa seconded.

They stared expectantly at Jean.

And suddenly, it hit him like a titan's fist. How had he forgotten?

He knew it all along, too.

He had pissed off Lieutenant Rivers of the 4th Division of the Survey Corps, and he forgot how, but it had something to do with trying to use maneuver gear to fly up to his room and breaking several tables, windows, and legs in the process. Luckily, Rivers was merciful enough, so he didn't get the horrid whipping he knew he would've gotten in the Special Ops squad.

It was a few months after the failed 57th expedition, and still a somber mood hung over the castle. However, they admittedly childish antics of the new recruits gave the occasional smile to the passing veteran.

Anyway, he had pissed off Rivers, and as punishment he had to first clean the stalls, then the bathrooms, then make dinner for their division—and the Special Ops, because everyone loved them. This somehow was perfect for atoning for his sins, but he didn't know nor care how.

It took a total of three days to complete these tasks fully, and when he finished, the evening of the third night, his muscles and mind were sore from overuse. The night wasn't particularly pretty. Few candles pierced the darkness, and he knew that if there wasn't a warm outcropping of clouds, he could probably see every star in the eastern sky.

The wind was rather hot for his liking, and the wind was warm too, and he was sweaty and stinky and had an awful headache and couldn't he just be eaten by a titan and put out of his misery? He stumbled in the vague direction of his dormitory, hoping that muscle memory would guide him to the right place.

It didn't guide him to the right place.

He found himself collapsing on an isolated staircase Rose-knows-where, but he passed Eren's basement and the officer's quarters a while back. He slid down at the corner, letting his head fall to his knees. It might be a better idea just to sleep there for the night, or at least until the pulsing in his head calmed down…

Miraculously, as he thought these words, his pulse died abruptly back to its regular perimeter.

And as his ears emptied, they were immediately filled with another, much more suspicious noise.

Breathy gasps sliding into heathen moans. The rustle of fabric and the clinking of gear. The sticky sounds of lips parting.

Shit.

He'd just stumbled upon a pair of lovers in their midnight rendezvous.

He knew, by rights, that it was wrong to stay there. It was voyeurism, technically, and if he was caught, then he'd die by embarrassment if not a superior's (if it was a superior in there) hand. The brief thought flickered across his mind that it was Lieutenant Rivers in that party, but he pushed it away just as quickly. She was already annoyed, and frankly, he was terrified of her.

But he really couldn't curb his curiosity, no matter how he tried. So, careful not to make a sound, he leaned his head, just to his eyes, around the corner.

And immediately had equal desires to vomit, groan in exasperation, and scream in absolute terror because the tall, tan, shirtless man pressed solidly against the bare wall, possibly three feet away from where Jean hid, was the one and only Eren Jaeger.

And the short, pale, black-haired man that straddled him against the glow of the moonlight was undoubtedly Levi Ackerman.

With a dash of horror, Jean noticed a piece of frilly white cloth laying discarded near his hand—the famous cravat. Meanwhile, he had to duck as a white button-down shirt was tossed violently and carelessly in any direction.

He liked guys, sure. He was aware that it wasn't very acceptable. But he had never expected Eren, who had the perfect potential to be a lady's man—he had to grudgingly admit that Eren was pretty darn attractive—to be gay, nonetheless for Corporal Levi.

The first thing his eyes were drawn to was abs, abs, and more hot-fricking-abs. But within seconds he was able to pry his eyes up to their faces, and he wasn't sure which was worse—the sexiness or pure loving intimacy of the situation.

Their kisses were surprisingly light and chaste, and while Eren's arms clung Levi to him like a second skin, Levi's hands caressed Eren's face delicately. Their eyes were closed, their faces were lightly flushed, and when Levi, briefly, opened them, Jean was almost blinded by the affection that radiated from them.

Some emotional instinct told him that if Eren were to open his eyes, it would be the same.

The kisses were becoming deeper, and Eren's spine curved and concaved with shivers. He slid roughly down the wall, carrying them onto the floor, and Levi took this as an opportunity to press their chests completely together.

It was at this point that Jean realized that it was still his mortal enemy kissing his superior there, it really was perverted and wrong for him to be watching this, and he was dead meat if they stopped being so absorbed in each other and noticed his elongated, jaw-dropped, shocked face mere feet from their…whatever.

He slunk away, not daring to make a single sound.

As he correctly maneuvered his way past the dungeon and towards his quarters, he realized that at that very moment, they were probably doing things more unspeakable than what he'd already seen.

He in no way would be able to look at either of them the same after this.

And by in large, he had to forget.

The headache and nausea came on full force from before, and he promptly strode over to the nearest window and vomited.

Presently, Jean stared at the floor, his mouth dry and his eyes wide and unblinking. He could feel Mikasa and Armin boring their gaze into him.

"Yeah," he said. "I always knew."

The memories cackled safe behind their shell.

 

PART TWO

For the first time in a long time, Jean could honestly call himself an idiot. He halfway considered thinking that he was glad Jaeger was dead so he could think this without risk, but then a bolt of guilt shot through him so thoroughly that he was tempted to crash into a tree.

After all, he would probably never let go of the fact that two bodies, both killed of their own volition, lay side by side in a bed of ice where the titan shifter once spent his nights.

But anyway—he pushed away the negative thoughts and brought his mind back to its numb, sweaty, exercise-induced bliss—he was an idiot, and quite possibly an amnesiac idiot as well.

He couldn't draw his thoughts from the near mind-blowing (but not really) concept that Eren and Levi were in a relationship. That was sexual (but also not really). He supposed he could blame it on not knowing whether it was dream or reality—though that would be a quite incriminating dream—but after the initial memory that came barreling down on him after the suicide, he threw himself not only into his work but into scouring his memory for more of these incidents.

He was quite aware that he was possibly too obsessed with this matter. Sure, he could stubbornly accept that they were friends, and yes, he had cared more than he let on. But it was honestly starting to scare him, the circumstances in which he literally could not remove his thoughts from the subject of love.

Thus, he did the only suitable thing he could and went to ask Armin.

Armin never made a big deal out of it, but as a proudly homosexual man Jean had to resist the urge to brag about the physical charms of his basically closest living friend. In the beginning, he had been a small-framed example of adorable, Aryan perfection. He had always, to some degree, reminded him of a male Christa, and he had believed for the longest time that they were long-lost siblings. They were both into girls, after all, and he distinctly believed (back then, locked in his teenage stupidity) that that was the sort of thing to run in the family.

But a little after the failed expedition, he began to notice the small things. His jaw was no longer round. Yes, his jaw was definitely straight, defined, and muscular, and suddenly his neck was too. And were those high cheekbones? No—actually, yes. His blond hair lost the girlish, even quality to it as he continued to let it grow, and somewhere along the line he had shaggy bangs and a long ponytail. Eren told him to cut it. Armin never did.

And suddenly, as well as asking for private study, Armin was challenging his squadmates to races around headquarters—sometimes on gear, sometimes running—and he consistently won.

Actually, now that he recalled it, that was the reason Rivers was pissed at him in the first place. It had been an unusual race, and the riskiest of them yet—shoot up the staircase to the terrace tower and leap of it, catching themselves with gear. He'd originally said no, but Armin justified it by saying that it was noteworthy training for control.

And that, then, was more circumstantial evidence that Jean was an idiot, because when he'd repeated those exact words to Lieutenant Rivers, he'd gotten an irritated kick to the cheekbone.

Back on the subject, he gradually noticed that Armin was now his height and at least his girth—he still retained the slender form of bones, but his muscles were solid now. He also had a thin layer of blond stubble.

Jean had gotten over Armin romantically long before Trost. But even so, he'd be a fool not to recognize that the virtual genius was quite possibly literally a god.

These days, Hanji reclined in her favorite chair by the window, with a haphazard stock of documents beside her feet. She'd been tasked, in honor of her scientific prowess, with the job of organizing her findings and statements for federal archive, in lieu of the daunting possibility that titans might appear again.

(However, the story of the titans was rather unique and emotionally disturbing, so I'm not going to go into that, but please note that the circumstances are unlikely to ever appear again in history, so you are safe. Actually, let me enlighten you with a summary.

A Summary of How Titans Came to the Earth

Once upon a time, there was a man with three daughters so beautiful, they were hailed as goddesses.

The man was a psychopath.

He was a scientist who owned a gorilla, and kept the poor creature in a cage. He mutated its genes. He abused it. It grew.

The villagers cried, "Titan!" when they saw the escaped giant ape.

He was angry at humans. He killed them all.

Then, for some fucked up reason, they proceeded to transform into giant creatures with equal bloodlust for humans.

He got a bit tired of that. They were so helpless. It was boring.

He created the shifters. He made the genes so that there would be an alpha who controlled the actions of the others.

The stupid humans called the alpha a coordinate. Tch.

Then a short human with black hair that smelled suspiciously like the coordinate came along and sliced his neck.

His last thought was, Damn.

There. Enlightened?)

Armin, meanwhile, had taken Erwin's place as Commander. He sat at the desk, handling the economics and politics of the moving outside of the walls. The Survey Corps had taken it upon themselves to be the pioneers who led the humans to freedom. It was odd—while the inner government was that of safety and wealth, in the end, it was those who lived in the fringe, who walked calmly on the edge between life and death, yes, those who never ceased to fight—it was them who would be the rebuilders of civilization: the rebuilders of the world. 

It was inevitable, really, that in the end, all of them in their different squads would be separated from each other in the reaches of their familiarity. So far, from what Jean was aware, the best of the best would first make the path, traveling east until they reach the furthest sea. It would take months. Years. And even without the looming threat of titans, it was a taboo knowledge that in the end, at least some of them, the people they'd known for decades and loved as brothers and sisters, were going to die.

But this was the stage of preparation, of making decisions and families and political movements, and the day when they saw each other away was far below the horizon—far enough that it hid behind the sun itself.

Besides, with the death that still netted them, it wasn't a train of thought he wanted to take.

Jean entered the open office, gingerly weaving through piles of paper. Hanji was sprawled on the wide windowsill, drifting in and out of a leisurely sleep. Armin methodically sifted through the papers, and the smooth rolling of his quill was a tribute to the uneven passage of time.

Jean sat down at the chair placed expectantly there. Armin didn't react. "Hey, Jean."

"Hey, Armin," he responded. "So I need to talk to you."

"I figured," he said. "It was just a matter of time, really."

For the millionth time, perhaps literally, Jean wondered why Armin knew him so well.

"So, I suppose that also means you know what I'm here to talk about."

"I have a guess," he said. "But please, go ahead and tell me. Entertain me. This damn job is driving me insane and I need some petty horse problems to take my mind off things."

Jean blinked. "Excuse me?"

"I'm pissed. Hanji is already immune to my piss, but you are evidently not."

"I didn't know you could get pissed."

"That's why you shouldn't join be commander. It sucks the life out of you. And even before then—well, let's say you should never consider being in the Special Ops Squad."

"Because…"

"Because that's what we did. We spent our time being pissed at each other."

From the windowsill, a rough, lethargic snort of laughter was carried in by the evening breeze. Hanji peeped an eye, and when Jean glanced at her, her face stretched eerily into a smile.

He shuddered. He could only imagine.

This was more than uncharacteristic of Armin. He'd always known the docile if not wanderlust-stricken boy as just that. He knew they had been assigned to different groups, but even then they maintained a close friendship. He supposed it was only natural that in an environment where he shouldn't, by rights, be annoyed, that he wouldn't' see that side of him. But he'd never heard a story, none with laughs, and none with teasing grins. It was that old, long-buried feeling of being left out that dug up from his soul.

And he was determined to kiss it goodbye.

"I have a feeling we're not talking about my problems anymore," Jean mused.

Armin shook his head. "Huh? Sorry; that was…I'll tell you later."

"Is it because I'm here?" Hanji called.

"Yes, incidentally," he replied. "But you can stay for Jean's problems, if it is what I think it is?"

"Is what you think it is what I think it is?"

Armin nodded in confirmation. Jean was thoroughly confused. Smart people. He wasn't paid enough for them. "I'm sorry, but what do you think it is?"

"You tell me," Armin said coyly.

Jean took a deep breath. Right. Smart people. Problems that he needed to deal with; truths he needed to either discover or accept; and depths of his mind which he needed to scrape clean. He needed to know why his heart was linked to what wasn't his to worry about. He needed…

He needed help, as much as he was headstrong and hated to admit that.

He needed help.

"Ever since the suicide, ever since Mikasa told me about…well…you know…" He glanced uncertainly at Hanji.

Hanji seemed to have anticipated this; wide brown eyes still sharp after battle stared at him through half-polished glasses. There had always been a certain element to her that gave her the impression of insanity, but a soft smile creased the developing folds on her skin—she was in her mid-forties—and an aura of sadness wafted from her. "I know," she said. "I knew before anyone else here. I knew before they knew, even."

Jean didn't ask. He knew that while he had every right to ask, it wasn't his place.

He took a gulp of air and continued. "Ever since I found out about their relationship, I don't know; I guess it affected me somehow. I know it's weird. I know it's creepy. I know that I shouldn't, but knowing that they were like that has me thinking about the why's and the when's and the how's and just love in general. My mind is obsessed. It hurts."

Part of him expected Armin to slink away into his own shyness, to be thoroughly disturbed at what Jean had admitted, and to revert Jean into his former state of disconnection. But Armin, the boy turned man, the weakness turned strength, never failed to surprise him. He laughed.

"I knew it," he said between lighthearted peals. He threw a hand in Hanji's direction. "Didn't you know it?"

"I knew it," she crowed.

"Exactly!" he huffed.

Jean groaned inwardly. Smart people.

Armin ceased his laughter. "Oh, Jean, it's not anything bad. It affected me, too, and that's sort of what I need to tell you later.

"I know you dated Marco."

"What?"

Jean's mind was blank. Washed clean. "Marco," he whispered.

"I know."

"But…how?"

"It wasn't obvious!" Armin stuttered. "But…you'd be a fool to let something like that slip past me."

Jean shook his head blatantly, and the blankness, too, slipped away into whatever void it had come from. In its wake, however, there was an imprint of burning pain that seared him enough that it had faded into white, and what remained was nothing.

He again had to take himself for a fool, because how on Earth could he have ever expected Armin not to know? There was a silver sheen of brilliance that had always rested surely over the man's shoulders, enough that he was anything but surprised when Hanji had retired her position as Commander to him. Once upon a time, over a decade ago, Jean remembered that there had existed a boy who believed he meant nothing. Jean had been an ignorant young teenager then. He'd known Armin by name and by that little insecure blond boy who relied on Mikasa and Eren (and also looked very much like Christa). But even then, he had to admit he was intelligent.

Even before it all happened. Even before he proved himself an important tactician and debater. Even before Marco died.

"It's okay, Jean," Armin whispered. "Let it out. Let out the grief."

"Ten years," he said. "Ten years since he died. Eight since I forgot about him." His eyes drifted closed, where the backstage memories were smoothing out their costumes and stepping into the spotlight. "But I guess I never really forgot, did I?"

Armin offered a hand—to hold, to cry on, Jean wasn't really sure—but all he could manage to do was stare at it. A broad hand, with veins popping out at the wrist and calloused palms. He never really bothered noticing those things, but now that he thought about it, that hand didn't look to belong to Armin.

Jean curled his forearms around his chest, pinching his lips shut.

Armin inhaled softly before withdrawing his hand. He slid over a dust-covered volume, pages leathery and crinkled in sepia. His fingers danced over the faded imprints on the cover. "This is my philosophy book," he said. "Found it when we went back to Shiganshina, along with my atlas. But this one… I used to pore over it, trying to understand, but it was all too much for me. Suppose it makes sense—I was a kid, after all, but when I found it, I read it front to back. It's where I found the four kinds of love."

"Don't remind me," Jean muttered.

"I also found the stages of grief. Denial, anger, self-loathing, guilt, acceptance, or something like that. It was tucked at the very end. I only found it maybe five months ago." He paused. "And the thing is, when I read the part about grief, I stopped believing in that book. I stopped believing in those concepts that things that big, that important, that cataclysmic could be explained by a chart or a paragraph."

"Now you're getting the big picture," Hanji cut in. "Sorry, know it's an inconvenient time, but it's about time you realize that knowledge isn't all out of books."

"Well, look at what I'm understanding," he sniped at the window. He turned back to Jean. "Grief, love, all the things we don't understand: they're connected to each other. Can't have one without the other. If you grieve, you can say to yourself, 'I think I really loved this person.' And then, flip it around, and you find yourself in the place where you love someone so much that you can't ever let them go."

The bookshelves with their narrow spines taunted Jean from the sidelines. Inside of them, there were words, probably wise, proven words, and words that have been put down on paper and can't ever jump off.

His heart seemed something akin to the sun. It rose and fell, and when it peeked over the horizon there was no guarantee that it wouldn't be covered by silver, ever-changing clouds. But now, his heart was rising, and the sky was crystal clear, and he knew: he had been in love with Marco Bodt, and he had never truly stopped.

"Oh my Rose," he said. "Rose." His gaze flew up into Armin's calculating gaze before he could stop himself. "I never fell out of love, did I?"

A tear fell on the book between them. Hastily Jean reached out his thumb and shakily attempted to wipe it off. He didn't trust himself to rub the tears from his own eyes.

"You're just of that certain breed, Jean Kirschtein," Armin said. Somehow, his voice balanced between a demand and a weak cry. "I may be a scientific person, but I have never let go of the belief that there is a soul mate out there for everyone. Some people find theirs. Some people don't. I didn't, but I feel so lucky."

Jean took the initiative to continue. "Well, in a world like ours, fate must like slapping us across the face, because these things tend to turn out in tragedy, don't they?"

Armin looked past Hanji. Jean followed his vision, but beyond the twilight he was sure Armin saw something deeper in the world than the normal eye could see. "Don't we always call it that—tragedy. For all we know, they're having their happily ever after. Maybe Eren's waiting for Levi to take him across the world. Maybe the old squad, even after all this time, is finding their own paradise. Maybe Marco's watching over us, too. Maybe he's smiling at us right now. Maybe this isn't their tragedy—it's only ours."

Jean lifted a heavy hand into the sky. No mysterious caress of cool air, no whisper in his ear. The dead really did leave the world nice and open. "I reckon most of them have deserted this place," he said. "'Specially Corporal. One less soul is a world one soul cleaner."

"That man really was neurotic," Hanji piped up. "Almost unbearable. And he called me crazy."

"You are crazy," Armin admitted. Jean nodded.

Her nose wrinkled. "Well, so are you two. Moping over the dead and philosophy. You know there are people who talk like this about their food supplies or whatnot, but here we are, aren't we, just going on about the workings of the soul. If I'm crazy, you two are drop-dead insane."

"Think we've been through way too much not to be crazy," Jean commented.

Hanji laughed. "Oh yes. Every person that's seen all that blood with the Titans has fallen to bat, no exceptions. Especially the Legion, we're just over the top, I think. Shame that we're the chosen ones to repopulate the earth. Think of what the next generation will become."

"A little bit crazier than us in some ways, and in others, the most normal people we'll ever have the pleasure to meet," Armin said.

Later, when Hanji had retired early to sleep, it occurred to Jean to ask what had been wrong with Armin earlier on. "What came over you?" he asked. "It was almost like you were another person."

The crickets chirped from the murky fluid darkness outside the window. "It's a little hard to explain," Armin started. "A mental thing."

"Try me," Jean said.

"Well, more of a grief thing, to be honest, but it's amounted to the same thing. When Eren died," he began again. "When he died, I was in bad shape. It took me a few days for it to sink in, but even then, I kept seeing his little quirks, scattered everywhere. In the kitchen, the coffee he made was never quite right anymore. With me and him and Mikasa, we were always a trio, but there was a sudden gap. There was a new, foreign person in command. So I started trying to fix things. I made things the way he did. I thought things like him occasionally. Eventually, I slipped into his mannerisms."

Jean blinked. "I...can you summarize that?"

Armin faced him wildly. "When I said I was crazy, I wasn't joking. The grief is taking me away, burning me. Sometimes, it hurts so much that I become him."

Jean was a fool, a goddamn, lovestruck-far-too-late, spurned-by-the-world fool, and the world was crazy, and he didn't know how to feel about that.


	6. Hanji's Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanji thinks these things out logically (sort of), and remembers the close connection she had to the both of them.

A wayward observation: reputations are not like titan blood. They do not evaporate, leaving you a clean slate for new destruction. They are like blood of any other kind—they stay, they stain, and they never let anyone forget that you were once something to admire or to fear.

Levi Ackerman was like ash thrown on a glue design on paper: he stuck where he was supposed to, leaving a forever trapped impression, and the rest was blown away, shaken off, and quickly forgotten. As an important figure in history, she was present when their stories—mere paragraphs, really—were inscribed into a thick-bound book. 'Levi Ackerman,' it read, 'Lance Corporal of the Scouting Legion since the year 843. Known as Humanity's Strongest Soldier, he was rumored to have the strength of many men. His kill count is unknown, though the highest in known history. Leader of the Special Operations Squad.' Afterwards, it spouted a load of bullshit about his military statistics.

'Childhood unknown. Died at the age of thirty-six by suicide—motivation not specified. Had no children nor a wife/lover.'

To reiterate, complete and utter load of bullshit.

They were pouring his ashes over the history of their very own world. They were careful to pour them right over the glue, and not even she could stop them as they blew the rest of the ashes away. Maybe, when a boy like Armin picked it up, thousands of years later, he would see the shallow description and wonder, who else was this person?

But then again, it was a strength-against-death world, and curiosities were low priority.

Levi Ackerman was more than neat print on a page. He was more than a legend, more than someone to aspire to, more than a hero. Those titles were too low to describe him, and if she had to be honest, she didn't have the imagination to come up with more, though she could try.

He was the king of losing himself. The master of being tangled in his emotions. The great, great sea of tears he never had the opportunity to shed. A beautifully broken masterpiece. He was a labyrinth, a paradox, the wall in your mind between your innermost thoughts and your voice. He was her best friend, the best she'd ever had since Ilse, like her brother, if she had to elaborate. He was dazzling with brilliant hope. He was rotting from the inside out from crippling neurosis. He was the epitome of freedom, of death, of shattered things.

He was the most complicated thing she'd ever tried to understand, and the world deserved to know that. But a thousand years from now, no one would even be close.

It took all her strength not to shout out all the obvious lies, when she stood in the shady room, a quivering scribe with a cramped hand etching the words, but Erwin had been pressuring her recently to calm herself down, despite her not-so-well contained anger.

She hadn't resigned herself to the fate, but she forced herself to accept it: Levi was destined to be forever known as the strongest soldier, swept along by the ravages of time, and the man he was would be lost.

His reputation, the poor thing, wasn't titan's blood. It wasn't about to leave him behind, wipe his board clean. It was ironic, really—the hater of filthy stuff, stained by his past and choked by the noxiousness of the pigs trying to run the hellhole.

It wasn't like they'd understand, she reasoned with herself. After all, it was sort of a thing, she guessed, that you were expected to treat the outsiders like trash within Wall Sina. Eren Jaeger, unless the subject was execution, was taboo. The Legion was something to spit on. If you were hungry, you could go out and eat some cake.

"I really could go for some cake," she murmured without purpose. Unconsciously she clenched her fist around her sleeve and slid her eyes closed. "Been eighteen years, hasn't it, since I've had a good strawberry upside-down cake. Bet there's some rich bitch taking the cake."

Her dormitory was silent. Mikasa was out somewhere with Armin or Jean or both, probably exploring the closest village and drinking dreams at the local tavern. The threadbare sheets were illuminated by equally threadbare lights, kept far away from the window but still flickering gold. She sighed and leaned further against the wall.

Her eyes snapped open with a gasp. "I'm starving and I want my cake."

A wayward observation: memories are much clearer when counting down from the ending. When trying to tell the story from the very beginning, you always realize there's something earlier than what you remember, and then your story becomes messy and disconnected, like trying to place the stones of the fallen Wall back together in the exact same pattern. 

Start from the end—it's the way the world works. 

Crying, crying, she was crying…

"Oh, my Rose, Mika, Levi's dead!" 

Ah, there we were.

She couldn't remember her dreams from that night. If she'd been a lesser person, she'd have said it was a dreamless sleep, but she knew that wasn't true. Every minute of every night of every person's life is filled to the very edge with dreams. But—strange phenomena—they vanish, upon waking.

Later, she wondered whether she had talked with Levi that night. Maybe she did, and if not, maybe she saw it happen. Maybe he smiled, or shed a tear, for the second time since forever passed. Maybe he hugged her back, finally; she'd been hugging him at random over the years, trying to get him to wrap his arms around her yet again. Maybe, he whispered goodbye, and told her it was all worth it, in the end, but there were some things he couldn't bear. Then, perhaps, he asked if it was alright for him to erase her memory so she wouldn't hurt. She might have protested at first, but then she'd say it was okay.

She'd have said it was all okay.

But maybe, just maybe, none of that happened. Maybe in the world of her dreams, the night was an inky black, dripping through every crevice. She might have been sitting atop the highest tower, with her hair tugged free and the wind glancing off her cheek. Maybe, in the terrace, feet below her, she watched Levi straighten up for the first time since everything went to hell. Maybe she saw him stare off into the night, like there were answers hidden in the hiding stars—he might have taken the key off of his neck and held it tenderly in his palm. Maybe he smiled at the night—hell, maybe he opened his mouth and laughed like a child, because he was so broken that nothing could stop him anymore.

When she woke up, there was no sense of something being wrong, no chiming loss in her soul. It was an outright normal morning bound to lead into a normal day. Mikasa was asleep across the room, and Hanji grinned as she peeked at her face. She wondered what dreams the woman led—sleep was the only time that war wasn't etched in her every feature.

It was still dark outside. Not even a gray, yet—more of a last surge of shadow before the dawn. She looped through the corridors, fetched lukewarm tea from the sleepy soldiers on kitchen duty, and headed toward the back, where the more intricate towers rose over the marsh and gardens sprawled below.

As was her habit, she pressed her fingers to her lips and placed a kiss on the dungeon entrance.

Cool, damp air rose from the gardens. Moss made a bed between the red and yellow flowers that surrounded the bulk of it. Many soldiers made their morning rounds through the garden, finding ancient benches and wreckage underneath bent weeping willows. When the war was still being fought, it was the one place where nerves seemed to evaporate. She remembered when Levi started frequenting the place.

Where was Levi, anyway?

A yell rose from a clearing to the right. She fought to make out the words. "—body! A body!"

She broke into a sprint, tearing aside shrubs and leaping over thicket to reach it. Something in that heart of hers panicked.

"Lieutenant Cantwell, Cadet Armstrong," she greeted. "What do we have here?"

Silver light peered over the edges of the clearing, just filtering in the right way to cast a spotlight on the body that was sprawled, facedown, on the grass.

It was messy. Gory. Not something many want to deal with.

She remembered, once upon a time, that Armin told her about his friend Mina. She was a long-forgotten, long dead recruit, a nameless, faceless figure among the many trainees who died in Trost. Hanji supposed she seemed nice enough, but he said that her death was what imprinted him over the years.

Red veil of blood, over her forehead, and draped over like a dress. "It was like she was to get married," he'd said. "Sickening, that a pretty girl like her be married to Death so early."

The blood was in a neat sheet around the person's veil, almost as if they had taken it upon themselves to smooth it out. The dead man on the ground had put on his veil willingly. The back of his skull was cracked open, and luckily she couldn't see brain matter through the blood, though it would be nothing new.

Yet, even before she saw the black undercut soaked there, she knew it was Levi.

"Turn him over," she commanded in a shaky voice.

Cadet Armstrong looked up at her with a shocked expression. "Commander, shouldn't we leave the body for the forensics team?"

"I was once on the forensics team, thank you very much," she snapped. "Turn him over." Her eyes grew thoughtful. "He deserves to see the sun for the last time."

Carefully, the hands reached under his shoulders and flipped him over, adjusting his neck and head.

"Oh my Sina, is that…" Cantwell faltered.

She knelt down. To be honest, she wasn't sure she could stand another minute, not even another second, not able to touch him. The rocks burned her knees—ah, what familiar and welcome pain. She ran a chewed fingernail across his translucent cheek. "Levi. Oh, Levi."

Her thoughts burned. "Leave," she ordered.

Cantwell sighed in a deflated tone. "This really isn't wise…"

"Leave!" she barked, taking a gulp of air. "Sorry," she said. "I don't mean to lash, but this man is one of my dearest friends. I would like a bit of privacy, soldiers."

Hesitantly, he nodded. "Come along, Armstrong."

She turned her attention back to Levi. His eyes were closed, smart one, though she wouldn't have expected anything less. He, more than anyone, knew the horror of a dead person's stare—lost, empty, like the words had been stolen out of a book itself.

She wondered, stupid as it was, whether there was still life underneath the eyelids. No, she thought. Wouldn't that be yet another slap in the face from fate: go through all this trouble to escape the turning of the earth, only to be trapped by his own eyelids.

But it hurt—he was smiling. That brass key, half-rusted over and its purpose long since used up, was clutched in his fist like he wanted it to fly him away. Maybe he did. Maybe that's where his soul went, going up as his body went down.

And he was smiling, Rose, he was smiling. His face, no wrinkles to begin with, must have been what Eren had seen, must have been the person that Eren fell for. The angel that hid under the gruff exterior. Everyone has that angel, she knew—no appearance or façade, no words or actions, nothing in this small world of ours can hide the stars we hold somewhere in there.

She sat next to his head, not caring about the blood. She could change, anyway. He couldn't. Her thumb traced over his forehead, over, and over, as soft as she could manage.

"Are you free now, Levi?" she asked. "It feels nice, doesn't it, being in a place like yours. Like the garden over here, all fresh and dewy and clean. Like a good piece of cake, too." She paused. "I'm not mad, you know. I don't think I can ever be mad at you, even for taking your own life, because I knew it was bound to happen. You love that dead ole boy something wild—still do, even now. I hope you end up together. Even if you don't, I know you aren't about to stop fighting to reach each other again.

"I wonder if you can hear me. This is your first testimony, you know. This is the first spoken thought of anyone to ever see you. But knowing you, probably not. You're probably already out in the world, looking for that love of yours. It's still a dirty world. Is now, probably will be forever. But just you wait. Go out and find the things that're taboo in here. Find yourself up on a mountain, or in the desert. Go to places we haven't even dreamed of, and do it quick, before we filthy humans catch up.

"But, oh, Rose, I love you. I love you like the family I've been missing, like a best friend, like a brother. I love you too much to feel offended by this. Because isn't life a chain, for you? Everything and almost everyone you've ever loved is dead but never gone, and you're being pulled towards a future of fame and fortune you want to spit at.

"I'm going to hurt, but I'll be okay. I know you're okay. I know…" she faltered from her ceaseless speech. She couldn't hold in the tears anymore, if she were even trying. The light blurred into a river of black nights, misty mornings, and golden forevers.

"Oh, my Rose, Mika, Levi's dead!" 

a little bit back

He had fallen apart the moment Eren died. She could feel it. She remembered when he first joined the Legion—he was an inferno, a special breed, among his comrades. She figured it must be an underground city thing, that unquenchable desire for freedom, those elements that burned behind the shelter of his eyes. "Murderous apathy", they called it—she could laugh. It was the panic of a trapped animal, the rush of dangerous adrenaline.

She herself didn't feel particularly threatened, despite his usual disrespectful attitude towards her. Her only wish, back then, had been the fire inside him never be put out.

But there it was: fate, with a bucket of cold water.

Isabel and Farlan. Splash.

Petra. Auruo. Erd. Gunther. Mike. Splash. 

Erwin. Splash.

Eren.

Oh, Rose, Eren.

Those seas that that boy loved came at Levi like a storm, quickly snuffing him out. He hadn't even stood a chance against it. It was why people warned not to fall in love in the military (well, it isn't as if emotions can be explicitly stopped).

90% are usually wiped out, if the statistic. Well, somewhere in that ninety percent, there's hardly room for two. It ended in tragedy, by experience.

But Levi couldn't help it. Eren added more and more fuel to the flame. He was some beautiful combination of cheerful dumbass and broken soldier—he was the only other inferno Hanji had ever met. There was no stopping him. There was no stopping them. Hell, the only way they could ever be destroyed is if they destroyed themselves, and as a proud wingman, she could happily say that their relationship was as sound as relationships seemed to get.

Yet, for some reason, Eren was dead.

Eren? Dead? Impossible. He was magnificent. The driving force behind the Scouting Legion; the driving force behind the war's impending victory.

Every morning and afternoon he would sit across from Levi, with Mikasa and Armin at his right, and Jean, Connie, and Sasha filling up every other space. The air would be filled with laughter, even if it was a tough day in training, even if the approaching expedition was looming heavily over them. He and Jean would make playful jabs at each other—no more outright conflict—and while Levi would roll his eyes, there would be a tiny smile on his lips. Connie would pepper Eren about getting a girl in the local village. Eren would raise his eyebrows and say that he wasn't really interested, and Connie would fire back by saying he must be in love with one of them pretty titans. To follow up, Sasha would sigh, palm over her chest, about their tragic love. No one would notice the faint blush spreading over their Squad Leader's face, or the sideways glance Eren sent to him when he put a hand over his face in exasperation.

She and the other members would see him pass in the corridors. The people who really only knew him by reputation would nod respectfully, and he would chirp a hello at them. When it was Hanji or someone he knew, he would laugh and slap their shoulder lightly. If he had nowhere to go or nothing to do, he would offer to take some of her paperwork. But she would wiggle her eyebrows and say that poor Levi needed help more. He would dash away, and she would chuckle, because she loved being the only one who knew about their relationship.

In much of his free time, he trained. She wasn't quite sure what his training schedule was, but it apparently worked, because he was more and more adept at using the gear, and more and more muscular. If she had to be honest, she enjoyed experimentation not only because of his willingness to comply, not only because of the scientific knowledge she gleaned, but also because his abs were glorious and she deserved a bit of ogling, right?

Then, when the newer recruits trained, he would take it upon himself to help them. He was better with the younger ones than the rest of the Legion—Armin liked to joke that it was because he still had the mind of a teenager—and they took to him immediately.

Sometimes, in the cool, dewy hours of the evening, when the pastels of the eastern sky fell into the distant mountains and sapped out the stars, the three of them—Eren, Levi, and she—would take off their gear, climb to the top of the willow tree, and simply talk about anything that wasn't military. She would drape herself over the branch, Eren would prop himself against the trunk, and Levi would slide onto his lap and lean back into the crook of his neck. Nothing much would happen. They'd stay like that until the sky was fully dark and the stars were all watching.

Then, Eren would place a kiss on his cheek, say, "Get off me, you slug," and they'd all make their ways to their various places in the castle.

When it came to Titans, or plans, or anything really, he was still the passion-driven young man that stepped into the Legion all those years ago. He'd gained wisdom and experience—he faced problems with logic, nowadays, and trained his brain to be as strong as the rest of him.

But there was that other side of him, the sweet side, the side that laughed, that befriended everyone he met, that lurked behind his face, with his dreams and goals.

It was so bright. She loved him, she loved him so much, like a son, or a brother, but mostly as a friend. Dead? Impossible.

But his heart wasn't beating and he wasn't regenerating. His skin was cold and waxy. His eyes were glazed over, and one final tear was dripping off his nose onto the stone cliff. He was dead. There was no other explanation.

His body preserved itself, though. Last stand of the Titan in him, he stayed intact. They washed the blood off of him and placed him in the meat cellar, clearing out a shelf in Storage Room #3 for him. "We'll keep him there until we can agree on a proper funeral," the Special Ops Squad agreed. So there he was, a soulless vessel, wrecked and abandoned in the empty seas of his forever open eyes.

She could still remember the feel of the rock cliff beneath her boots. She'd long come to recognize different materials merely by the sensation. The rock there was hard—it was a place of finality.

She'd knelt down, staining her knees with blood, and wrapped her arms around Levi. He pushed against her weakly, trying to reach the cliff face, but the effort was fruitless. He fell into her embrace, Eren still pressed to his chest, and ruptured with a fit of shivers.

"Hey," she said gently. "Hey." He pulled his chin to his chest. "Levi. Look at me."

"No," he said. She was about to retort, but he continued. "Eren…don't go down into the basement."

It hurt, the memories that struck her. She'd been the last among the Legion to wander down there before the evidence was taken away for preservation. It had all made sense—Levi's hysterics, Eren's disconnection with the rest of the world, and Erwin, that snaky, caring bastard, with tears streaming down his cheeks. She cried, just a little, but how couldn't she?

An execution sentence, written years before Eren had been put into custody by the military. Who knew how long Grisha had been planning this? Eren Jaeger, the boy born to save the human race.

Eren Jaeger, the boy born to die.

Tears brimmed beneath her eyes. "He…he had to," she said.

"Promise you won't do it, Eren," he mumbled. "We can kill them all by ourselves. I can do it by myself, if you want. Don't do it. Don't do. Don't. Don't."

"He had to," she repeated, unable to help the shakiness in her voice.

"Stay now."

"He had…" She broke off. Her throat was as swollen as her head, and her heart was pounding faster and slower and she couldn't tell up from down and Eren was dead. She pushed her voice out. "Levi, please." 

For the first time, he looked up at her. She tried not to see, but his face was made of pottery shards, stuck together by cheap glue that was bound to part. "He's such a filthy liar, Hanji," he breathed. "He said he would give us forever, but he's such a…shitty…liar…"

In the end she picked them up, Levi and the deadweight body, staggered under their weight, and brought them to the empty supply wagon, where he lay limp, she held him tight, and she finally let herself sob.

She took Levi to the garden, lay him down on a bench. "I have to take Eren now," she said. "Please—take…take this chance. This may well be your last goodbye." He nodded solemnly. "I'll give you two your privacy."

She scaled the tree behind him, to the high branch where they all used to sit. The moon had come out by then, and if she peered hard enough, through the thick canopy of the hushed whispers of the leaves, she could see it, looming a silver-white in the distant sky. The stars were so beautiful that night, so beautiful, so bright, and so very, very small.

She found it ironic that they were tucked away somewhere in the mysterious darkness of the universe as a whole. It was ironic, wasn't it, that if she were to come near to them, that the light and the heat and the sheer enormity of the stars would kill her.

A wayward observation: the most wildly beautiful things we will ever know are the things that can be lost, or the things that can never be touched—they are the things that are far, far away.

She didn't see their faces, but she couldn't help hearing Levi's words.

"I never really thought I'd have to do this, you know. I always knew that you—hell, not me—you were the strong one. You never let a damn person cut you down, and it should have been obvious that the only one that could nab ya was…you. But…oh, Rose, I hate you so much. I hate that I know I won't ever hate you, but what did you think would happen to me? You knew more than anyone. You knew more than Hanji. More than Erwin. More than my first friends. More than myself.

"And I know I'm talking more than you've ever seen me do but there are so many things that I wish I'd said long, long ago and I need to say now before I go crazy with them inside my mind.

"I want to see the ends of the earth with you. I want to see the sea and the icy deserts and the way the stars align themselves differently everywhere and I want to see the way they reflect in your eyes. I want to put a ring on your finger and fight with you on whether one of us should wear a dress and which one who would wear it. It would be a bit odd, but I think I'd wear that dress if it made you happy. I want you to watch my hair go gray and I want to watch yours gray too, and I want to adopt a cat or something, name it Fucker, and buy a house and go on long walks with only our bare feet. I want to climb lots of trees and mountains with you, and play children's games like tag and capture the flags with our friends and our maneuver gear—we'd find a way, I'm sure, to do that. And I want to have a good-sized bed with windows on either side that catch the sunlight and the sunset, and I want to go to sleep in your arms and wake up with it the other way around, so we laugh about how the fuck that happened. And maybe, we can adopt a kid, preferably clean and well-mannered, so we can give him or her the perfect childhood neither of us got. And I want to live near your family—don't even argue, that training squad of yours will always be a family—so we can see who marries whom and have our kid grow up with theirs. I want to be with you until my very last second in this life, and after that I want to wait until you're with me again so we can spend another eternity. We'll go see the old squad Eren, and then the entire world again, and—I've got this all planned out—it doesn't stop there, we'll leave this wicked world behind and go to the stars.

"I want you to know that you're perfect, even though you're a filthy fucking liar, and that you saved me and helped me realize that my life is more than a leaf in the wind. And I want you to know that as much as you want me to, wherever you are, I'm never going to forget you. And also, even though some of my dreams in this won't come true, I want you to know that I'm still waiting to touch the stars with you, Eren, still waiting to leave this place and feel the freedom of space and touch the stars.

"I want you to know that you're absolutely beautiful. You're like a damn painting, except you're not made of canvas and oil, and every flaw you have makes you worth more.

"And…Rose, I wish I'd have said this more. You said it all the time, but I should have said it to you even more.

"I love you. I love you, and I have for several forever's, and for all the forever's left in eternity.

"Don't let this be the last goodbye."

(Three months later, she returned to the garden the night after Levi's body had been packed in ice. She climbed higher up the tree than she ever had before, until she was up where the branches were weaker and flexible, and her head was poking out of the leaves, where the night was cooler, and she seemed to be in a different layer of the world. She took a hand off of the thin trunk behind her and extended it into the air, pretending to cradle the stars. She wondered if they were out there now, dancing through black matter and reaching the awe-inspiring, faraway things. Touched the stars, just as Levi said they'd do.)

(It was the most she'd ever heard him say.)

a little further back than that, the memories start to blend; all the good times are distorted like an echo, like streaks in a painting

4

"You have a hickey!" she called out.

Levi looked at her with exasperation. "No, I don't."

"Yes, you do," she corrected. "Pull up your fancy scarf a little."

He grunted and pulled it up, though she grinned to see that his face became a little paler and he muttered, "Damn you, Eren."

3

The meeting ended, and the three of them waited until the rest of the superior officers filed out. Eren buried his head in his palms. "I can hardly believe that they're still threatening me. Have they not seen the progress file reports?"

"They have," he answered. "They're just looking for something to do besides sit around with their thumbs up their asses."

"Levi!" she scolded.

"I'm reassuring him," he said. "Right?"

Eren pecked him on the side of the mouth. "Of course."

"You're a terrible comforter," she pointed out.

"You're a terrible person," he said with a gleam in his eye she could identify as happiness.

2

"We're together, Hanji," Levi said bluntly, grabbing Eren's arm and pulling him closer. Eren stumbled.

She snapped her left hand. "Finally. Did everything go according to plan?"

He rolled his eyes. "I confessed to him, if that's what you're asking."

"I'll naturally assume you're here for my blessing, which is a little weird, seeing I'm the one who pressured you into courting him. But," she paused, turning to Eren. "He's a very fragile person, so don't break his heart. He likes his tea hot but not too hot, and he hates it when you touch him when you're filthy. He…"

"It's alright," Eren cut in. "I can well assure you that I'm not breaking any hearts any time in the next two thousand years, and about his own quirks, well." His lips perked up at the edges. "I think I'll learn on my own."

1

"Hot," Hanji commented.

"What are you talking about? It's chillier. They're breaking out the extra clothes."

"I mean Jaeger. Your boy. He's really hot."

"Hot is such a degrading word," he snapped. "And he's sixteen," he added as an afterthought.

"Then what would be your choice adjective?" she asked.

"Beautiful. Really, really fucking beautiful."

"Do you like him?"

"Maybe."

0

A wayward afterthought: There are no such things as happily ever afters. There are happy endings, but they are endings all the same, such is the way of the stories of life. Isn't it such a melancholy concept—the idea of endings? Even when it ends with a sense of finality, what is supposed to be closure, as long as there are other tales left unsaid, and every tale is, then there will be no closure.

So true love will be forgotten in the end, a much as it's glorified. And the history books will paint a bland portrait of a man, Corporal Levi Ackerman, and the man himself, who he was and who he was to everyone else, will be like leaves in the wind. 

And even after we liberated the world on the cost of the saddest story she'd ever known, of love that should never have been and should never have ended, and— 'Childhood unknown. Died at the age of thirty-six by suicide—motivation not specified. Had no children nor a wife/lover.'

To reiterate, complete and utter load of bullshit. 

The Legion is still being underestimated and underappreciated. I still haven't had a single slice of cake since I was a child. I remember that slice of cake. It was like heaven to me, who was so used to the blandness of the lower-middle class.

Only those from Sina are eating cake, aren't they? Only they are keeping the wealth, aren't they?

Oh, Rose, there's such anger in grief.


End file.
